Is this an anonymous 360o performance evaluation that we are seeing for the first time at Duke? If so, should we suspect that an anonymous performance 360o evaluation will be completed on the G88/87?

Broadhead is talking about the 'CASE' for Joe. This is 360o performance evaluation lingo.::GP::Alleva reappointed as Director of Athletics

Alleva was retained in light of an extensive report generated this summer by a nine-person review committee comprised of trustees, alumni and faculty and chaired by Trustee Emeritus Harold Yoh, Engineering '58.

Over 150 people commented to the committee on Alleva's job performance, said John Burness, vice president for public affairs and student relations.

Brodhead said "the emphasis on the integrity that [Alleva] has infused in our programs and the central place he gives to the idea of scholar-athletes" was the key factor in granting the Director of Athletics a five-year extension.

"You take all the different parts of what you hear and try to get a sense of what the main lines of the story are," Brodhead said. "I thought the case for Joe Alleva's strengths in the report was very strong and they're very central strengths for a program like ours."

I know this is WAY off subject and if anyone wants, please feel free to request a delete.

I want to offer a defense of the specieist perspective.

And I do this with great trepidation, for I know that it will brand me of the "soft sciences." I offer this, nonetheless.

I have a cat. Her name is "Sandy"...her full name is "Sandy Claws" in honor of the Christmas about 15 years ago when my wife and her mother rescued Sandy from the SPCA. Sandy is a special cat, for she is a calico cat and she has six toes on two of her paws. Hemingway would like Sandy.

In any event, I avoided and evaded Sandy for years...in fact, until 2004 or so, Sandy and I had very little interaction.

But as she grew older, I started to call her to me and to stroke her chin and otherwise acknowledge her being.

Since that, she oftentimes came to me and asked for my attention. And I called her "Sandy kitty cat" and I stroked her chin and played rough with her tummy and let her know that she was reality for me.

Tonight was different. As I often do, I looked her close in then eye and then petted her ears and the top of her head.

She looked at me as she often did and then....and this was the amazing thing...she started licking my face,...she licked my face with a ferocious resolve. Sandy had never done this before. She did this for quite a while, and I simply allowed the closeness of her being. At first I was startled and then I knew,...she was telling me that soon she would die.

this from todays chronicle on the departure of the head of pratt engineering...talk about sexism at its hated worst

"Finally, she stood out as the top administrator in a field dominated by men. A hire of former president Nan Keohane, Johnson's departure leaves the University largely bereft of female top administrators. Only Dean of Students Sue Wasiolek comes close to Johnson's status."

What a surprise! Joe Alleva is being reappointed Director of Athletics. I believe it was Alleva who gave Mike Pressler his walking papers after pompously declaring, “I fully support President Brodhead’s decision to cancel the remainder of the season as well as his outrage at the latest developments involving the men’s lacrosse program."

Among the more risible comments made in the latest press release:

1. President Broadhead lavished much praise on Alleva's "high standards of integrity in the athletics program." However, considering the blatant lack of integrity displayed by Broadhead himself during the Duke Hoax, a reasonable observer might well question exactly what the term "integrity" means at Duke University.

2. Broadhead also found time to compliment Alleva on his "championing of Duke’s concept of the student-athlete." Admirable, indeed, in theory. But in practice? As Duke's recent painful history has made clear, student-athletes who do not fill the politically correct concept [being male, white, reasonably well to do and members of an "elitist" sport] might be best advised not to look for many champions among their own athletic directors.

3. And then the capper, Broadhead's delight that "Duke athletes regularly rank among the top in the country in academic performance." Yes, and certainly some of that credit should go to Mike Pressler who, If I'm correct, had a 100% graduation rate for his lacrosse teams. Unfortunately, after the Duke hysteria reached critical mass Pressler got little or no praise for this since as the MSM constantly reminded us academic achievement meant little or nothing when you were coaching a team of beer swilling louts whose main activity seemed to consist of swaggering around harassing women and minorities.

Trying to look on the bright side, however, I do have to agree with mac that this will undoubtedly piss off John Feinstein. My sympathy to his readers [such as they are] who will have to endure his screed on how everything at Duke would be lollipops and roses if only the administration would just cave in and consult him on all matters pertaining to their athletic programs. Well, maybe. But somehow I doubt it.

Five years...hmmm. Time enough for Joe to hire one or two more horseshit football coaches.

Be real people, Joe Alleva got this job because of Coach K and kept it because of Coach K. Why would he want to deal with another AD as he finishes up his career? He wouldn't. So he's not. Five years from now, somebody knock on Joe's door, wake him up and tell him, "that'll do, Joe, that'll do".

To hell with being off-topic once in awhile. Its not a crime. And if you are of the "soft sciences" then so am I and proud of it. I was raised in a family of animal lovers and there is no way I can even describe the love and support they have generously given me over the years.

Your Sandy Claws sounds like a doll [I'm sure Hemingway would agree] and I'm so glad that your wife and mother-in-law rescued her from the SPCA. If only more people would do this when there are countless animals who need homes.

I'm glad you bonded with Sandy so well. As with people, sometimes it takes time for animals and people to get comfortable with one another.

I understand your loss and your sadness. My special cat was quasie. She slept on my face, she stole meat out of my sandwiches, she ate donuts [no really] and she was simply incapable of accepting the fact that any other cat in the universe deserved a second of attention that might be going to her.

And when she died my only solace was that they last thing she was aware of was the fact that I was holding her in my arms.

Again, I'm so sorry that you lost Sandy and I hope that someday you will find another special cat.

The bottom line is Duke has employed people who abosolutly lack any honor, integrity, charachter,honesty and leadership skills. The Duke 88, Broadhead, and Alleva all are just worthless, empty people with only money and agendas on their minds, concerned only about their tenure and pensions... nothing more...just worthless shells with no humanity no value whatsoever.

Who knows? Starns' last N&O offering--editor Torrey is quite enamored--was on how the color line in America has been blurred.

That whiplash-180 was quite a contrast from when he and the Gang of 88 were highlighting, every chance they got, that Reade, Collin, and David were white...and Mangum was black.

Bet Little Orin is a hit inside the athletics department as well:

Players do well just to show up for class now and then between the giant, more than full-time demands of the big-time sports schedule. Those questioning the hugely supersized role of college sports receive no invitations to the posh skybox. Another celebrity coach, Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, says complaints about sports' current role at universities are "very narrow-minded" and "so ridiculously wrong."

No surprise, Joe Alleva who uttered the immortal words, that best represent this hoax, "this is not about the truth", has been rehired by the university president who declared of his students in the media that "whatever they did is bad enough."

To think, when I was a boy my mom told me always tell the truth, the truth always wins out. Mom, even you are sometimes wrong.

It takes alot of honor and integrity to crash your boat into the rocks when you are drunk and then pass it off on your son. Alleva's son has told many that it was Joe who was driving the boat so there is an out and out lier in the Alleva family. I wonder who was more concerned about saving his butt? And whatever the Allevas did was bad enough.....they could have killed someone.

What a load of crap!!! This mental midget who is attached at the hip to the stumbling fumblebum brodhead is still living off the talents of Tom Butters. Anybody who can manufacture admissions numbers and donation dollars like these clowns can say anything and sniviling lapdogs will eat it up.

This whole place has become a laughing stock and they still do not get it.

Alleva SHOULD have been dismissed. He wasn't, because of the protection of Coach K, and he now can hide under that rock. Unfortunately, now Brodhead thinks he gets a pass too, and he just might in this crazy mixed up world called Duke. PLEASE, Board of Trustees, see the light, and clean house where it counts. Don't just look the other way - He didn't "do the best he could" - He has severely damaged our institution and hasn't made it right yet. His Group of 88 continues to haunt. This situation feels like a lost cause to most Alumni who care.

Duke students have been famous (or infamous, depending upon your point-of-view) for satirizing opponents. Once, in a game against Virginia when Terry Holland was coaching, they chanted in unison:"Foood Lion, Foood Lion!"

Holland did bear a striking resemblance to the guy who advertised Food Lion - (and who was a CEO or President of Food Lion.) I thought I was the only one who caught the similarity!

The Duke BB'ers might end up on the receiving end this year! It could be fun.

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I am from Higgins Beach, in Scarborough, Maine, six miles south of Portland. After spending five years as track announcer at Scarborough Downs, I left to study fulltime in graduate school, where my advisor was Akira Iriye. I have a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard, and an M.A. from the University of Chicago. At Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, I teach classes in 20th century US political, constitutional, and diplomatic history; in 2007-8, I was Fulbright Distinguished Chair for the Humanities at Tel Aviv University.

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"From the Scottsboro Boys to Clarence Gideon, some of the most memorable legal narratives have been tales of the wrongly accused. Now “Until Proven Innocent,” a new book about the false allegations of rape against three Duke lacrosse players, can join these galvanizing cautionary tales . . , Taylor and Johnson have made a gripping contribution to the literature of the wrongly accused. They remind us of the importance of constitutional checks on prosecutorial abuse. And they emphasize the lesson that Duke callously advised its own students to ignore: if you’re unjustly suspected of any crime, immediately call the best lawyer you can afford."--Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times Book Review